The present invention relates to an electrical connector and, more particularly, to a contact retention assembly for an electrical connector and to a new contact for use in such an assembly.
The present invention is particularly concerned with the problems associated with removing stabilized wire-wrap terminals or contacts from insulators. However, as will be appreciated from the foregoing description, the invention is not limited to this specific application and may be applicable to a wide variety of electrical connectors.
Contacts having wire-wrap tails, when terminated by semi or fully automatic wire-wrapping machines, require close dimensional control or positioning. Such control is normally achieved by built-in restrictions or guides in the connector insulator. Retention of the contacts in the insulator is achieved by a barbed or press fit design which retains the contacts and also stabilizes them dimensionally. The major disadvantage of this approach is that when contacts are removed from the insulator for replacement, the nature of the retention degrades the contact cavities. This degredation results in loss of contact retention and subsequent contact failure due to push-out or dislodging during use of the connector.
In order to overcome this problem, it has been proposed to use a spring retention tine on the contact to releasably retain the contact within the insulator of an electrical connector. A connector utilizing such a contact is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,594,698 to Anhalt, assigned to the assignee of the present application. The connector disclosed in such patent is a zero insertion force connector. The spring retention tine of the contact is stamped from the body of the contact and bent outwardly and rearwardly of the body so that the tine will deflect inwardly when the contact is inserted into a contact cavity in an insulator from the rear of the insulator. After the tine passes a forwardly facing shoulder on the wall of the cavity, the tine springs outwardly to engage the shoulder and, thereby, restrict rearward movement of the contact in the cavity. The contact also embodies a forwardly facing shoulder behind the spring retention tine which engages a rearwardly facing shoulder in the contact cavity to restrict forward movement of the contact in the cavity. When using a contact having a wire-wrap tail, it is necessary to provide a stabilizing plate for the tail at the rear of the insulator. The stabilization of the wire-wrap tail is achieved by a slip fit between the tail and a hub on the stabilizing plate.
Occasionally a contact in a connector will be damaged due to wire-wrapping or improper handling of the connector. As a consequence, the contact must be removed and replaced. In order to remove the contact from the insulator in the proposed connector described above, a tool would have to be inserted into the contact cavity from the front of the insulator to deflect the spring retention tine out of engagement with the forwardly facing shoulder in the cavity. The contact would then be removed rearwardly from the cavity. However, prior to contact removal, the stabilizing plate must also be removed. If the connector utilizes a large number of contacts, it is extremely difficult to position the stabilizing plate back over the contacts in the insulator due to the difficulty in aligning all the wire-wrap tails of the contacts with the holes in the stabilizing plate. Therefore, it would be desirable to employ a contact retention arrangement which allows the contacts to be inserted from the front of the insulator, and removed from the front so that the stabilizing plate need not be removed and reassembled onto the insulator in the event a damaged contact must be replaced. It is, therefore, the purpose of the present invention to provide a novel contact retention arrangement which allows front insertion and removal of a contact from a connector insulator.